Chapter Clapboard to Classicalist of C by Webster's Dictionary (1913 Edition)

1. To shut or fasten together with, or as with, a clasp; to shut or fasten (a clasp, or that which fastens with a clasp).

2. To inclose and hold in the hand or with the arms; to grasp; to embrace.

3. To surround and cling to; to entwine about. "Clasping ivy." Milton.

Clasp
(Clasp), n.

1. An adjustable catch, bent plate, or hook, for holding together two objects or the parts of anything, as the ends of a belt, the covers of a book, etc.

2. A close embrace; a throwing of the arms around; a grasping, as with the hand.

Clasp knife, a large knife, the blade of which folds or shuts into the handle. — Clasp lock, a lock which closes or secures itself by means of a spring.

Clasper
(Clasp"er) n.

1. One who, or that which, clasps, as a tendril. "The claspers of vines." Derham.

2. (Zoöl.) (a) One of a pair of organs used by the male for grasping the female among many of the Crustacea. (b) One of a pair of male copulatory organs, developed on the anterior side of the ventral fins of sharks and other elasmobranchs. See Illust. of Chimæra.

Claspered
(Clasp"ered) a. Furnished with tendrils.

Class
(Class) n. [F. classe, fr. L. classis class, collection, fleet; akin to Gr. klh^sis a calling, kalei^n to call, E. claim, haul.]

1. A group of individuals ranked together as possessing common characteristics; as, the different classes of society; the educated class; the lower classes.

2. A number of students in a school or college, of the same standing, or pursuing the same studies.

3. A comprehensive division of animate or inanimate objects, grouped together on account of their common characteristics, in any classification in natural science, and subdivided into orders, families, tribes, genera, etc.

4. A set; a kind or description, species or variety.

She had lost one class energies.
Macaulay.

5. (Methodist Church) One of the sections into which a church or congregation is divided, and which is under the supervision of a class leader.

Class of a curve (Math.), the kind of a curve as expressed by the number of tangents that can be drawn from any point to the curve. A circle is of the second class. — Class meeting (Methodist Church), a meeting of a class under the charge of a class leader, for counsel and relegious instruction.

Class
(Class) v. t. [imp. & p. p. Classed ; p. pr. & vb. n. Classing.] [Cf. F. classer. See Class, n.]

1. To arrange in classes; to classify or refer to some class; as, to class words or passages.

In scientific arrangement, to classify is used instead of to class. Dana.